Coevolution in the Pleistocene

Abstract

During the Pleistocene Epoch (2.5 million to 13,000 years ago), hominin culture surpassed genetics as the primary driver of the coevolution of our genus and species. According to Henrich and others, this process began with anatomical changes and better tools that led to cooperation in childcare and hunting, “reverse dominance” in gender relations, and a politics of prestige rather than domination. The middle and late Pleistocene saw the emergence of social norms, stronger bonds of tribalism, egalitarian practices, and the gradual invention of language. Homo sapiens arrived around 300,000 years ago with a “language-ready brain” that facilitated, says Dor, “the systematic instruction of the imagination.” Language increased the power of social norms that, in turn, led to a rise in the size of hunter-gatherer bands, tribalism, migration, and warfare. Ritual practices, which may be traced to our playful proclivities and aptitude for projection, emerged very late in the epoch. Some contemporary rituals, including BaYaka Pygmy rites, may be traced to the Pleistocene. On the basis of Whitehouse’s insights and method of ritual analysis specified in Chapter 2, the initiation rites of adolescent females into womanhood in these tribes may be described as a ritual that begins in dysphoria but eventuates in a euphoric ending. By primarily creating fused identities for the young women, the ritual affirms female solidarity through altruism and also helps to heal the sex and gender divide structured into tribal relations.